Health

An advisory committee will submit its recommendations in November, but the government has yet to identify funding or personnel to carry out the proposed clinical trials.

In Puerto Rico, where extreme heat poses a growing health risk, the government still lacks an effective system to track heat-related deaths.

The attorney and health care administrator, who served under the Vázquez and Pierluisi administrations, questioned the financial figures the health insurer submitted to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance of Puerto Rico and said the company’s true financial condition must be determined urgently.

This year, ASES has issued two fines against First Medical: one for $1.8 million for failing to pay providers and another for $1.4 million for failing to submit metrics for its call center. In 2024, the insurer was fined three times, for a total of more than $1.5 million, for failing to pay provider claims.

Monthly premiums have risen by an average of 100% over the past decade — and by more than 1,400% for retired government employees — while patients face higher copays, shrinking benefits and fewer doctors.

Doctors and other providers have stopped accepting the plan due to payment issues and say they are worried about the future of the insurer that covers the health care needs of half a million people in Puerto Rico.

A CPI investigation into the hospital’s sudden closure less than two years after it opened finds that serious financial problems and legal entanglements existed even before it began operating.

Despite soaring medical costs and widespread need, the government distributes life-saving health funds through an opaque system of arbitrary decisions.

The Office of the Inspector General has flagged unusual procurement practices at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which hired professional services through purchase orders — sometimes without withholding taxes — and paid invoices that lacked detailed descriptions of the work performed.

Despite not being confirmed for the position and facing numerous corruption allegations, the nominated Secretary of Health has already hired a close group of doctors who have been publicly defending him.

Most of the "new positions" for specialists announced by the outgoing Secretary of Health are internships for general practitioners and existing positions, rather than new training slots for medical specialists, which are desperately needed to address the service crisis on the island.

The DS has only managed to vaccinate 19 children, it lacks materials and resources, and its equipment and facilities are obsolete to face the sustained increase in cases.

The bankruptcy filed by Grupo HIMA under Chapter 11 for reorganization is around $500 million. While these debts grew, politicians or members of their families were hired by the company.

A small tech company called SupportPR, owned by a donor and collaborator of Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, has controlled and set the hiring guidelines for tech jobs at the Department of Health since the pandemic that has exceeded $144 million.

Since 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to demand that seven companies that use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment in Puerto Rico take measures to mitigate impacts on communities, such as the danger of cancer from long-term exposure. But it will not be until 2023 that there will be a regulation in place […]

Most health insurance companies keep secret the information about the quality and quantity of treatments that they approve for patients in Puerto Rico, at a time when a shortage of physicians and restrictions on coverage plans and medications worsen the quality of health services on the island, a CPI investigation found.